FREE THE WEED 15
A column by John Sinclair
Originally published May 18 2012 by Michigan Medical Marijuana Report
Highest greetings from Dublin, Ireland, where any form of cannabis consumption—medical or recreational—is fully prohibited. It’s been a rough passage for your intrepid medical marijuana correspondent since I flew out of Detroit for Amsterdam two weeks ago.
I was only in Amsterdam for a couple of days when I had to fly to London to perform at a poetry night called Tongue Fu and make an interview with the BBC6 Morning show to promote my tour with Howard Marks (google “Mr. Nice”), who’s invited me to join his stage show now called “Breathin’ Air with Howard Marks & John Sinclair.”
I flew right back to Amsterdam the next day and took the train back to London three days later to begin the “Breathin’ Air” tour at the Udderbelly Festival at South Bank. Coming off the train at St. Pancras station in London, I suffered a frightening incident with the British customs authorities that resulted in the seizure of eight grams of medical marijuana prescribed by my Dutch doctor, the threat of being taken to jail for the first time in 40 years, and the ultimate imposition of a £50 fine (about $75.00 USD) before I was released to resume my life as a patient stripped of his medicine.
The next night Mr. Nice opened our first show together by projecting my arrest and fine papers on the screen behind us and introduced me with the story of my recent arrest. Our audience got a big kick out of it and we managed to turn a lemon into instant lemonade.
But now it’s terrific to be back in Amsterdam where I can buy my medicine over the counter at the 420 Café whether I’m feeling poorly or quite fine. The coffeeshops of Amsterdam continue to provide a safe haven for the traveling smoker—sick or well—despite the national government’s attempt to turn the coffeeshops into private clubs for Dutch residents only where Dutch smokers will be forced to register as members of one particular club and non-Dutch smokers to be barred from all premises as a “public nuisance.”
I arrived here two weeks ago just after the imposition in the southern sector of the Netherlands of the dread weedpass law on a trial basis and was elated to see that serious resistance to the new law had already begun. In Maastricht and other affected cities. The Dutch smokers were refusing to register and the coffeeshops, thus deprived of their clientele, had closed their doors.
The DutchNews.nl news digest reported that all 14 of Maastricht’s cannabis cafes had closed their doors May 1st in protest at new rules banning them from selling marijuana and hashish to tourists. The doors have closed because no-one has registered as a member and the coffeeshops have no customers, costing the jobs of nearly 390 people.
One coffeeshop named Easy Going did open for a time but was given a written warning by officials because it did not have a membership list available.
Some 70% of Maastricht coffeeshop customers are from abroad. Owners and a few hundred sympathizers held a demonstration in front of the town hall in Maastricht on May 1st. Parades of protest were mounted, and street dealers have been displayed on television selling weed to tourists and locals and gloating about their new-found profits.
In Tilburg, the owner of the Toermalijn coffeeshop was also given a police warning for failing to meet the new rules. But owner Willem Vugs announced the coffeeshop owners’ determination to contest the wietpas law: “One infringement is enough for us to take a test case to court.”
In Venlo, two of the city’s five coffee shops have closed down for good. One other, called Nobody's Place, reports just six people have signed up for membership. Local police have been handing out flyers to German tourists alerting them to the new situation.
This is some of the craziest shit I’ve ever encountered and I’ll be following all current developments as they unfold. Why on earth would these fanatics want to dismantle a sensible, eminently workable system that’s been in effect for fully 40 years? New elections are scheduled for September 12, and it remains to be seen which way the voters and their elected officials will turn on this issue once the smoke clears after the balloting.
Speaking of elections, when I was in Dublin I had the opportunity to meet with Irish member of parliament Luke “Ming” Flanagan, Independent TD for the Roscommon-South Leitrim district who is the republic’s leading champion of legalizing medical marijuana in Ireland.
Ming says the situation in his part of the world is pretty dire with respect to the chances of a full hearing on medical marijuana, although he plans to move toward a preliminary vote in the Dail this fall just to see where his support might exist preparatory to taking the next step toward eventual legalization. Ming is also a friend of Howard Marks and promised to come out to our show in Dublin May 27th when we begin the “Breathin’ Air” Irish Tour.
Finally, I was heartened to read the words of Aleksander Kwasniewski, former President of Poland (1995-2005), in the International Herald Tribune the other day:
“In the year 2000 I signed one of Europe’s most conservative laws on drug possession. Any amount of illicit substances a person possessed meant they were eligible for up to three years in prison. Our hope was that this would help to liberate Poland, and especially its youths, from drugs….
“We were mistaken. Jail sentences did not lead to the jailing of drug traffickers. Nor did it prove to be a deterrent to drug abuse.
“What the law did do was enable the police to haul in droves of young people caught with small amounts of marijuana. More than half of all arrests under the law were of people aged 24 and younger. Criminalization of drug users resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of identified cases of drug possession: from 2,815 in 2000 t0 30,548 in 2008. The vast majority were not drug dealers. The law also proved to be very expensive for taxpayers.
“It is my hope that leaders in other countries will learn from Poland’s experience. Such a policy failure should not be repeated anywhere else in the world. For this reason, I decided to join the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
“Our role as politicians is to protect our communities and improve the functioning of our states. This may mean that we have to admit to having made mistakes. Fortunately now we know how to correct them.
You dig? Thank you, sir. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear our own President make a similar confession?
—Dublin
May 18, 2012 >
Amsterdam
May 20, 2012
© 2012 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved. |
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